Starbucks to join growing movement to eliminate plastic straws

The movement to eliminate plastic straws is gathering steam

You might have already used one of these today: plastic straws you find in fast-food restaurants or with your iced coffee are the target of a new movement to reduce plastic waste.

Hi friends, this is Jeff and you are listening to the podcast that goes at the right speed for people learning English. Today is episode 69 and you can find a transcript of the program at PlainEnglish.com/69. Later on in today’s episode we’ll talk about the English expression “gathering steam.” So I want you to pay close attention to the whole first part of the episode to see if you can hear the phrase “gathering steam” since that’s what we’re going to be talking about in the second half.

Searching for an alternative to the plastic straw

A movement is gathering steam to reduce the world’s consumption of a ubiquitous product: plastic straws. Straws present a vexing problem for the environment because they are rarely recycled and they don’t break down in nature. In fact, a single plastic straw will stay around for 200 years before breaking down in nature. So straws are turning up in the oceans and hurting wildlife there. A YouTube video showing a marine biologist pulling plastic straws out of a sea turtle’s nose went viral.

In the United States alone, we use 500 million plastic straws a day—that’s more than one per person—and it adds up to 175 billion plastic straws every year. We get them in fast-food restaurants like McDonalds and Chipotle, with our iced coffee drinks at Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, and then at countless sit-down restaurants and bars, which often serve tiny little plastic straws with cocktails that are more a decoration than anything else. Much of the world’s plastic gets recycled, but packaging and straws are often just thrown in the garbage—or even discarded outside normal trash collection—likely because they’re so small that people overlook the need to recycle them. One really unappetizing result of this is that small plastics are being eaten by fish and then that plastic shows up again on our dinner plates since the fish we eat were also eating plastic out of the world’s oceans and rivers. One study—and don’t ask me how they measure such things—one study said that by the year 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.

That’s one reason that environmental groups have begun to call for taxes, boycotts or outright governmental bans on plastic straws. The United Kingdom announced in April that it plans to ban the sale of plastic straws in the future. Consumer and environmental groups are putting pressure on fast-food companies to cut down on the plastic they discard. Starbucks announced on Monday that they will eliminate all plastic straws and instead use lids for cold drinks that allow you to sip without a straw. Some Starbucks drinks will come with straws in the future, but those straws will be made of paper or compostable plastic that would break down more easily.

You did hear me right when I said paper. Paper straws were actually invented in the 1800s and they can be strong enough so they don’t dissolve in your drink. Other options include straws made of bamboo and, of course, re-usable, sturdy plastic, glass or metal. The problem with those is keeping them clean.

It might seem like a good decision to switch from plastic to paper straws, which break down in the environment, but it’s not so simple. In order to produce paper or other straws based on more natural materials, you need to use a lot of water and energy—and all that has an environmental cost, too. The other challenge is getting enough of them. There’s already a big industry to supply the restaurant world with plastic straws. McDonald’s can’t simply announce that it’s moving to paper straws because the companies that make paper straws wouldn’t be big enough to satisfy all of McDonald’s thirsty customers. The transition would have to be gradual. McDonald’s, incidentally, said that it is phasing out plastic straws in the UK and Ireland; perhaps if consumers don’t mind the alternatives, they will follow Starbucks’ lead and eliminate them worldwide. Straws also represent just a very, very tiny fraction of all the plastic discarded in the ocean—it might make sense to start with something bigger. But advocates say that plastic straws are really unnecessary and that most people can probably stop using straws without ever really noticing a difference. They hope that by tackling straws first, people might be more open to changing their plastic-consumption habits on other things, like plastic forks and knives, later on.

I remember first becoming aware of this in Mexico, actually. I don’t remember exactly where or when I first saw this, but I know that bars and restaurants in Mexico have had small signs at the bar area urging customers not to use straws if they don’t need it. I know in some countries, especially in Latin America, it’s popular to drink soft drinks from the can with a straw, mostly out of concern that the can might not be clean. But my last trip to Mexico was to Los Cabos, and I saw the notes about the straws in a couple of places there.

In fact, as I was writing this episode, I noticed not a plastic straw but one of those long green plastic stoppers they give you in Starbucks to keep the coffee from spilling as you carry it back home. And the truth is I really didn’t need this plastic stopper—I honestly just took it because they offered it. So I definitely know I can cut down on plastic in my own personal life. I will make a point to put this in my overflowing recycling bin, though.

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